It's been two months since the last blog post, and i feel it's high time for another. Unfortunately, I don't have much to write about. I guess it's been a bland two months.

This morning though, as I was organizing our collection of children's literature, I was thinking that I should make a list of the books that I really adore reading to Ava (and to myself!). I am quite lucky to take care of a girl who loves reading as much as I do. We seriously read for an hour to an hour and a half every morning and then again for about an hour as we eat our lunch. I know it may be unique to Ava, but I think it's funny when you take a child development class in college and are taught that a child's attention span is roughly 3-5 minutes per year of age. Ava is four so that would make her maximum attention span 20 minutes. Hogwash. I know that I built up her listening endurance though as the first day she came to my house we read half of a book before she wanted to move onto another activity (although the first thing she asked me the very next day was if we could maybe finish that book we started) and then slowly I just kept adding books until we were reading at least ten in one sitting. I choose the books (so we have a little more variety) and she gets to choose the order in which we read them. I have really come to love reading out loud and I especially enjoy all of the illustrations - we have lots of Caldecott medal books on our shelves. Perhaps if I could go and do it over again I would be a children's libarian (oops, librarian). =)

So, here, in no particular order, are my favorite children's books to pour over again and again:

A Child's Garden of Verses written by Robert Louis Stevenson, ill. by Alice and Martin Provensen
In the Forest written and ill. by Marie Hall Ets
Chanticleer and the Fox adapted from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ill. by Barbara Cooney
Three Little Kittens written and ill. by Paul Galdone
Goldie Locks Has Chicken Pocks written by Erin Dealey, ill. by Hanako Wakiyama
Blueberries for Sal written and ill. by Robert McCloskey
The Story of Johnny Appleseed retold and ill. by Aliki
The Biggest Bear written and ill. by Lynd Ward
Cinderella translated and ill. by Marcia Brown
Many Moons written by James Thurber, ill. by Louis Slobodkin
Wee Gillis written by Munro Leaf, ill. by Robert Lawson
Doctor DeSoto written and ill. by William Steig
A New Coat for Anna written by Harriet Ziefert, ill. by Anita Lobel
The Story of Ferdinand written by Munro Leaf, ill. by Robert Lawson
Frog Went A-Courtin' retold by John Langstaff, ill. by Feodor Rojankovsky
The Storm Book written by Charlotte Zolotow, ill. by Margaret Bloy Graham
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel written and ill. by Virginia Lee Burton
Ox-Cart Man written by Donald Hall, ill. by Barbara Cooney
Millions of Cats written and ill. by Wanda Gag
Stone Soup written and ill. by Marcia Brown
Bread and Jam for Frances written by Russell Hoban, ill. by Lillian Hoban
Billy and Blaze written and ill. by C.W. Andersen
The Best Loved Doll written by Rebecca Caudill, ill. by Elliott Gilbert
The Story of Babar written and ill. by Jean de Brunhoff
Harry the Dirty Dog written by Gene Zion, ill. by Margaret Bloy Graham
Make Way for Ducklings written and ill. by Robert McCloskey
The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher written and ill. by Beatrix Potter (all of her stories are lovely)
Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea written by Cynthia Rylant, ill. by Arthur Howard (we LOVE all of the Mr. Putter books)
Flicka, Ricka, Dicka Bake a Cake written and ill. by Maj Lindman (again all of the books in the series are great!)
Frog and Toad are Friends written and ill. by Arnold Lobel (we love the whole series plus Owl at Home)

since our computer crashed it's not quite the same yet so this will probably have an odd font and font size. and i don't have any pictures right now. so sad...

Well, old man Winter decided to show his face around Petaluma this morning. He's an early guest - I thought he was supposed to arrive on the 21st! As long as our heater is on (which you will be glad to know PG&E lit the pilot last Thursday), we don't mind his visit. It's really pretty actually. Everything is sparkling in the sunlight. I went for a walk to take these pictures but couldn't go too far because my socks were so thin my feet felt like they were going to freeze and break right off. I think as a Californian I'm a bit unprepared to face 25 degree weather. I guess the city thinks so too because they actually coned off streets that were deemed too icy - which I'm sure a northerner would find rather humorous. Don't those Wisconsin folks drive over a frozen lake all winter? (I know the answer is yes. And in light of that I want to say "thank you" to my parents for moving 2000 miles west.) =)

I guess we should have registered for two sets of bedding? On Monday morning after washing the bedding I was remaking the bed and went to put the pillowcases on and instead of the pillows going into the cases, the cases practically tore in half. These are not just any pillowcases either, they are our wedding present pillowcases that my parents gave us three years ago. Our incredibly soft, ridiculously high thread-count, superior Egyptian cotton pillowcases. I am incredibly disappointed to see these go. I may even make handkerchiefs out of them for posterity. (Maybe our grandchildren will want a little piece of our first Crate and Barrel pillowcases?)

A couple of weeks ago our fitted sheet split right down the middle too. This also was a wedding present in a way, in that we bought it for ourselves after returning some registry items that were duplicates. I can remember standing on the third floor of Macy's Men's at Stoneridge trying to justify the cost of this (sixty dollar? eighty?) sheet -"We'll spend eight hours a day lying on this piece of fabric!" Actually, the price really does seem quite warranted if you look at it that way. Maybe I can convince Paul again... I replaced the sheet two weeks ago with a sheet of the Bluelight special variety. And guess what? The two-week old sheet is already completely pilly. It's downright horrid. I hate sleeping on it and I swear that I have gotten less sleep because of those pills. (I'm weird like that though, I can't sleep well with bunchy sheets or while wearing pajama pants or socks. I seriously just got goosebumps thinking about how awful it is to sleep in pajama pants.)

Is anyone still reading this post? I know that I should be grateful that my problems amount to deteriorating sheet sets and not being able to sleep in socks. But I do just miss our nice lovely bedding and I'm feeling a little nostalgic because it was one of the first things that belonged to us as a couple.

We're still sleeping on those pillowcases by the way - afterall, they are only ripped halfway down the middle on one side. So far the other side is still in relatively good shape. I learned from the K-Mart mistake (which was way more extravagant than buying the fancy sheet the first time around if you look at how poorly it's held up already!). You have to hold on to these good things as long as you possibly can!

Now I've got "Jack and Diane" in my head. You know, "Hold on to sixteen as long as you can! Changes come around real soon make us women and men." Oh John Mellancamp. How your gift of poetry has stuck with me. Thank you.

And you're welcome, reader, for this wonderful post.

A day in the life of a stay-at-home preschool provider. Well, this represents more than one day, but every day is always filled with books, art, and eating.Today I got another little girl to join us! Woohoo! I'm so excited. She's two and her name is Ansleigh and her family seems cool. This blog post is very picture heavy because I'm too excited about having another kid coming to my house that I don't even know what to say!

Autumn has arrived! The other day Ava (the 3 year old I watch) and I went for a walk and collected a basketful of leaves for an art project. As we were leaving the house to go on our leaf hunt she looked up at the sky and decided she would wear her rain slicker and galoshes "just in case." (Really, though, who wouldn't want to wear ladybug boots?) As we were walking down the street and marveling at all things waterproof, she stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk and exclaimed, "AND! these are bendy boots!" and proceeded to demonstrate how easy it was to squat down while wearing her boots. It made me laugh and very glad to being doing what I do.

This past week our kitten, Minnie, discovered that she can climb fences! It's really quite scary to think of all of the trouble she can get into now that she's out in the big, wide world beyond our little backyard. I made her a makeshift collar out of a scrap of ribbon I had and attached a little piece of paper to it with our address and phone number on it, just to be safe. So far though, she just perches her little body on the fence most of the time. It's a little scary to know that she's wandering off, but she does look cute up on the fence with the ribbon around her neck.

Last Friday I turned twenty-eight and Paul and I went out to dinner at Dempsey's to celebrate.  I'm sure I've blogged (can that really be turned into a verb?) about Dempsey's before - it's this great little microbrewery restaurant situated on the riverfront in downtown Petaluma.  It's fun to go there because you can park downtown and then walk across the river on a little footbridge (more on that later), and the scenery is particularly charming after dark as they have strung lights in the trees lining the riverbank which dance on the water's surface.  The restaurant itself has an outdoor patio overlooking this whole scene and even though it was drizzling that night we chose to sit out there.  It was a wise choice too because with the exception of one other couple sitting on the far opposite end of the patio, we had dinner to ourselves. Thanks to an umbrella over the table the rain didn't bother us either.  It was a very nice, memorable evening out.  It was made a little bit more memorable on the walk back to our car as well.  That quaint wooden footbridge, the first rain of the season, a slight downward slope, and my flats proved to be a rotten combination.  With seemingly no warning, my feet slipped out from under me and I fell really hard on my rear end.  It totally knocked the wind out of me, but I regained my composure quickly.  It was actually quite comedic.  Knocked down but not defeated, Paul dusted me off and we went home and ate huge slices of birthday cake.  It was truly a joyful, memorable evening.

P.S. You might think that Paul and I look like we are totally wasted in the picture above, but I just want to clarify that when you are outside and it is dark when a flashbulb goes off in front of your eyes it's incredibly difficult to keep them open.  Believe it or not, we took about 6 pictures prior to this one and this was the only one in which both of us actually had our eyes semi-open.  I wanted to keep trying to take pictures, but Paul's like Chandler from Friends - after a while he forgets how to smile (which you can sort of tell in this picture) - so he asked if we could stop.  Below are a few priceless "out-takes:"

                     

Apparently, we're not so photogenic. Paul said he was trying to get something out of his tooth in that one picture - guess he forgot what we were doing.